Kwabena Achampong

March 16,2017

How does the US Government impact undocumented immigrants?

The Impact of Government affects not only affects
undocumented immigrants but also their family.
With families already being torn apart as a result of Donald Trump’s
anti-immigrant agenda, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus
were looking forward to meeting with Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). ICE enforces federal laws governing border control,
customs, trade and immigration to promote homeland security and public
safety. Officials tried to discuss the current and future impact on their
communities,​ however​ ICE abruptly cancelled the meeting that had been
arranged earlier this week, claiming that the Caucus had submitted a larger
guest list than they anticipated. After the cancellation, the Department of
Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, reached out to the GOP
leadership of the House for direction. According to House Democratic
Leader Nancy Pelosi in a press conference, the Trump administration
decided it wanted the meeting to be bipartisan and took the “highly
unusual” step of designating who would attend from both parties which did
not include any members of the Hispanic Caucus. When Caucus members
arrived at the meeting expecting that House Speaker Paul Ryan would
grant them the courtesy of attending as guests, they were kicked out
because they were not on the list of invited attendees.
As a result of​ this officials who were allowed into the meeting
described an aggressive and combative encounter with promises of many
more arrests and deportations to come. “There’s never been a meeting like
this,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “I’ve never seen anything
like it.” The hour-long meeting with current ICE Director Thomas Homan
covered a range of concerns about recent arrests and deportations around
the country, though allowed caucus members said they left the meeting
with many questions unanswered. In terms of deportations, I do not think
Republicans are wrong trying to deport illegal criminals and Democrats are
not either as they said they strongly support finding and deporting serious
illegal criminals, ​but ​what I​ think​ they do fear is that ICE will indiscriminately
arrest people with low-level offenses or none at all to meet possible quotas.
Trump made cracking down on illegal immigration a central focus of his
presidential campaign so I would not be surprised if he eventually boast
about the number of illegal immigrants he was able to have removed with
this method of cracking down on immigrants.
Foley, Elise. "Latino Democrats Excluded From Meeting With ICE That
They Requested." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 16 Feb.
2017. Web. 16 Feb. 2017.
"Democrats, Advocates Question ICE Enforcement Raids." CNN. Cable
News Network, n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2017.